


the second law of thermodynamics

by BoisterousBattlecat



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Canon What Canon, Character Study, Depression, Far Future, Gen, Tifa Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24923671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoisterousBattlecat/pseuds/BoisterousBattlecat
Summary: For the 423rd time, Tifa Lockhart confronts Sephiroth.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart & Sephiroth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	the second law of thermodynamics

**Author's Note:**

> _down here in the atmosphere, garbage and city lights, you’ve gone to save your tired soul. you’ve gone to save their lives. — somewhere out there by our lady peace_
> 
> Many thanks to [sanctum_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctum_c) for betaing!

“Why do you keep fighting?”

He always says these now-meaningless words, and she simply keeps walking.

“You understand that I will always return.”

His wraiths move to consume her, and she dismisses them with a single backhanded strike.

“But you only need to lose once for me to gain access to the mortal world.”

The path under her feet falls away like quicksand, and she makes no acknowledgement of his illusion.

“My victory is inevitable. The moment Jenova landed in the Northern Continent, the planet was destined to be hers.”

She stops, lifts her head up, gazes into Sephiroth’s poison-mad eyes, so close she can see every individual eyelash, cracks her fists with the heedless ease of routine. “And yet, we’re still here.”

For the 423rd time, Tifa Lockhart confronts Sephiroth.

He approaches her when she’s licking her wounds from their last battle, his form still only barely coherent. He opens a starry mouth. 

“Let me guess, ‘your sacrifice is pointless, serve me instead of your Cetra, I will not instantly kill you the second you stop being useful,’ that sort of thing.” Tifa pulls a bandage (not real, but she likes the familiarity) tight with one hand. “Am I right?”

He contemptuously stares down at her. “Are you so blind to how she’s condemned you?”

“Am I so blind to everything you’ve done?” she retorts. “I took this position to protect Gaia from you.” There’s a snap. She’s ripped the bandage in twain.

He smirks, eyebrows creeping up with victory. “And now everything you ever knew or thought to know is long dead. Surrender, and you’ll be able to enjoy what little you have left before I finally consume the world.”

Bandages spool out like silk around her, one moment tying her hair, one moment draped across her legs, one moment lying on her arms, and she throws them off and stands up to face him. “I don’t think I will. I couldn’t betray _my friends_ like that.”

That one almost makes him bare his teeth. “Pitiable clinging,” Sephiroth hisses, and then he finally lets his manifestation break apart and drift away in a flutter of black feathers.

She sighs, the rush of striking at his weak spots already fading from her. She’d learnt of his past back when she’d only killed him a dozen or so times, still thought she could talk him down.

But now, it feels like this is the only eternity that’s ever existed.

She’s leaning back and watching the souls come floating down when Sephiroth appears again. He’s a half-finished jigsaw puzzle now, certainly found wherever his right arm went after she tore it off. “How cruel is war,” he says behind her, apparently thinking that she didn’t know where he was from the second his presence started corrupting the Lifestream near her.

Here, she can see glimmers of sunlight reflecting off the mako surface. “You’re only saying that because you know that’s what I think.”

Clumps of blood dance through the Lifestream in snappish ribbons. “How barbaric,” he half-whispers, eyes shining with glee. “They don’t deserve existence.”

She shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, you haven’t seen all the good we’re capable of.”

“What is that compared to their sins?” He scoffs. “We are deities. If we do not cleanse the sin from the world, what will? You ought to desire it as well, have you not seen more than enough of their hypocrisy and greed—”

He’s distracted so she kicks up at him.

Masamune blocks her boot and his gaze flickers down to bandages unravelling to reveal unbroken skin. “I see your leg has healed.”

“Fuck you.” She strikes again, but he vanishes into fragments of hard-edged light before her fist can meet his face. Disappointing, she was hoping to end this before they had to fight again.

“Was that really the action of a righteous savior?”

She throws her head back towards him. Presses her boot harder into the wraith’s corpse. Not many have been appearing lately; he must be laughing at the new war. “I haven’t been or claimed to be that. I’ve just… done what I thought needed to be done.” The smell of ash, blood on concrete streets.

All pointless in the end, when Sephiroth’s mad quest destroyed the world’s reactors.

He takes a single floating step towards her, stops when he sees her reaction. Closer, she wills him. Closer and she can fight and have a good chance of winning. For what that’s worth in this world.

He doesn’t move. Only silently regards her, mouth twisting into a slight frown. She watches him back, looking for any sign of an arm tensing to attack. They stay like that for a while, before he finally says “I don’t know why I came here.” His hand twitches towards Masamune.

“To—” _Mock me?_ She almost says. _That’s what you usually do._ The man’s in love with the sound of his own voice. But no, that’s an overdone exchange. It won’t hurt—effect, that’s probably a better word, maybe—him. “Do you just want to talk, then?”

His lips thin, his eyes narrow, and his hand clenches. “No,” he finally says. “Never.”

Tifa ought to be disappointed that her ploy failed, but she can’t really find it in herself. She always knew how this would end, after all. “Till we both forget our names, then.”

“I’ll have won before that,” he says in the almost the same tone as her, and he’s gone, hidden by the screams of his wraiths before she can ponder that.

The weight of a million incinerated souls presses upon the Lifestream, almost suffocatingly heavy.

They consider the fallout in silence. “How meaningless,” Sephiroth says. “Who will remember their petty squabbles once I win?”

“Why are you telling me this?” An immensity of souls she can never truly grasp drifts down under the baleful burning light. “Your words might as well be gabble to me now.”

“Hilarious, when the truth is—”

 _I’m done with this_ , Tifa says or decides, in the Lifestream the difference between the two can be ambiguous sometimes, and attacks him.

She’s half-hearted. He’s half-healed. It doesn’t work out. After they’ve trashed a good portion of the area they were in, they stop, exhausted from both the effort and their new wounds. “You’re a mediocrity,” he pants. He’s never managed to shed that particular mortal affection. “The acceptable loss they decided they wouldn’t miss.”

“And you’re a hack,” she replies, leaning on the ground with one fist. “Come up with something new instead of repeating the same three talking points over and over.” She tries to stand up and stops after she winces slightly in pain.

“There are not enough trees in the world to print out how much I detest you.” With that, he leaves. Stupid alien magic.

She groans, feels the exhaustion escape her in wisps of ghostly smoke. “Why do you have to be like this?”

“Why do you keep fighting?”

She says that before he can start monologuing. “Even you can’t hold onto your hate forever. You’re already losing it; you’re simply in denial.” They stand across each other, the planet’s guardian and its would-be-killer.

“Hmph,” he draws Masamune. “Bold of you to make that accusation, when you’re simply letting yourself forget who killed your dear Cetra.”

She raises her fists and falls into combat stance. “And you’re lonely enough to speak to a scared little girl.” In the background, the planet screams. It’s nothing she has the luxury of worrying about, though, so she simply strides forward to meet him with knuckle and ice.

For the 424th time, Tifa Lockhart confronts Sephiroth.


End file.
